An individual who’s “on the sofa” is thought to be in remedy, however most therapists nowadays don’t ask their shoppers to lie down. The primary time mine did, I resisted. I didn’t need to be on show or unable to see her reactions. Plus, the thought appeared antiquated. Sigmund Freud was impressed to make use of the sofa greater than a century after observing dramatic hypnotherapy demonstrations by his trainer Jean-Martin Charcot. In psychoanalysis, Freud thought a therapist being out of view would assist folks entry feelings or reminiscences that may be repressed. (He additionally mentioned that he couldn’t “put up with being stared at by different folks for eight hours a day.”)
Lots of Freud’s concepts in regards to the unconscious haven’t held up, however he might have been onto one thing with the sofa, as I found after I ultimately adopted my therapist’s suggestion. The sofa may not be for everybody, but it surely may very well be price a strive.
At this time, therapists’ workplaces nonetheless nearly at all times have a sofa. For his ebook, Within the Shadow of Freud’s Sofa, Mark Gerald, a psychologist skilled in psychoanalysis, took portraits of therapists of their workplaces, and “it was a uncommon room that didn’t have a sofa,” he advised me. “Any individual as soon as talked about they really by no means used the sofa with their sufferers, but when they didn’t have a sofa, they wouldn’t really feel like a psychoanalyst.”
By Gerald, Mark
Regardless of the ubiquity of the therapist’s sofa, analysis on cases when it’s and isn’t useful is restricted. Some sufferers in case research report that they’ve missed seeing their therapists’ face after they lie down, whereas others have used the sofa to keep away from direct face-to-face communication. Even Freud wasn’t at all times strict in regards to the sofa. He additionally took walks together with his sufferers; he famously analyzed the composer Gustav Mahler throughout a four-hour stroll round Leiden.
However for me—and, I believe, many others—sometimes mendacity down may present some aid from the social elements of speaking with a therapist.The connection between a therapist and a shopper received’t absolutely disappear, and that dynamic may be helpful to look at in remedy too. But many remedy shoppers place an excessive amount of emphasis on interpersonal dynamics. On social media, folks make jokes about how a lot they need to get an A+ in remedy or make a therapist snort; I’ve felt the identical pressures myself. That stress may very well be diminished once you’re mendacity down and bodily incapable of scanning your therapist’s face for indicators of approval or displeasure. And in a time when many individuals have switched to teletherapy, watching your therapist’s face (or your individual) over Zoom can really feel like a piece assembly gone fallacious.
On a really simplistic degree, the sofa presents a change in perspective—actually. The traditional Greeks and Romans reclined throughout banquets, which created an environment of consolation and intimacy, says Nathan Kravis, a psychiatrist and historian of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical School who’s additionally the writer of On the Sofa. Within the fashionable world, mendacity down signifies that the dialog you’re about to have in remedy is a special form of interplay than these you may have with household or pals. It’s a time to confront troublesome ideas, admit shortcomings, or discover wishes with out the relational obligations to these we all know in our “actual” life. “Its strangeness is a part of the ability,” Kravis advised me. “It actually has no parallel anyplace else in our social world.”
By Kravis, Nathan
Mendacity down might also higher fulfill folks’s starvation for a extra artistic and humanistic type of remedy. Over the previous few years, curiosity in psychoanalysis has made a dramatic comeback, although the strategy nonetheless makes up a minority of remedy periods. Different therapeutic strategies, resembling cognitive behavioral remedy, purpose to alter ideas and behaviors that aren’t working for you; psychoanalysis, against this, focuses on self-exploration. I did CBT for years, and it’s very efficient at fixing issues. But one thing a few therapeutic follow that’s not as goal-oriented may be therapeutic. After I began to lie down, I felt that I used to be selecting to create space for reflection, grief, processing, and creating intimacy with my very own thoughts in a world the place such acts should not normally prioritized.
Mendacity down for remedy periods may make a follow that’s expensive in each money and time really feel much more indulgent, and I’m certain that some folks merely wouldn’t prefer it. However it’s accessible to everybody to strive a minimum of as soon as. Mendacity down is a method, not an finish aim, Ahron Friedberg, a licensed psychoanalyst and board-certified psychiatrist, advised me. It may very well be a approach of cultivating consolation, intimacy, and reflection, or talking in a fashion that you just’re not used to—to your self or to a therapist.
In Gerald’s workplace, he supplies selections. There’s a chair immediately throughout from the place he sits. There’s a sofa, just lately changed as a result of the unique grew to become saggy from years of use. A few of Gerald’s sufferers at all times lie down; others put it aside for after they’re feeling overwhelmed. One affected person normally sits up however will curl up right into a ball on the sofa when she’s going by means of a troublesome time. Kravis mentioned he talks with a brand new shopper face-to-face, then offers them the choice of mendacity down after a session or two. “It’s not obligatory,” he mentioned. “You’re not Velcroed to the sofa.”
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